


thievin’ demon

by fourshoesfrank



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Autistic Beetlejuice, Autistic Lydia Deetz, Found Family, Gen, Self Esteem Issues, Stimming, body image issues, hoooo boy. if this aint projecting idk wat is, not beetlebabes, pressure stims
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:07:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21827938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourshoesfrank/pseuds/fourshoesfrank
Summary: Betelgeuse loves snug clothes and so does Lydia, but he doesn’t want to wear any of her stuff because he’s afraid he‘ll stretch it out
Relationships: Beetlejuice & Lydia Deetz, Lydia Deetz & Barbara Maitland, Lydia Deetz & Charles Deetz, Lydia Deetz & Delia Deetz
Comments: 20
Kudos: 250





	thievin’ demon

**Author's Note:**

> yeah i’m spelling betelgeuse like the star instead of the compound word.......deal w it
> 
> also! fun fact! according to the IPA on the wikipedia page for betelgeuse (the star), the name can also be pronounced like “BEH-tuhl-juze” (/ˈbɛtəldʒuːz/ for those who know IPA) OR!! you can say it like “beht-all-GURZ” (/bɛtəlˈɡɜːɹz/ (the /ɹ/ is kinda optional)). thanks france
> 
> i just love phonetics i’m sorry. 
> 
> enjoy this!!

Lydia fucking  _hates_ being cold. Weird, right, considering how goth she is? Don’t goths love snow and winter and the darkness the season brings—

That doesn’t matter. Lydia hates the cold. She prefers to wear, at most, two layers of clothing (because she is  _smart_ ), not the bazillion layers of coats and socks that her dad insists she put on as soon as the first snowflake hits the ground. Thankfully, Delia doesn’t have the same attitude towards winter as Charles, but she does hang some ‘heat-trapping’ crystals up in Lydia’s room. She won’t let Lydia take them down.

Barbara and Adam can’t feel temperatures as acutely as the living, but they’re still aware that winter is upon them. A few days ago, Barbara scrounged up some matching (horrendous) sweaters from somewhere in the attic, and she and Adam have been wearing them nonstop ever since. It’s kinda cute, though Lydia is loathe to admit it.

Lydia doesn’t mind the idea of tacky awful sweaters, so she allows Delia to buy some for her. They’re not half bad, even if they came from Goodwill.

So, yeah, all of the human (or human-looking, in the Maitlands’ case) inhabitants of the house on the hill can all deal with the cold in their own way. They can make themselves un-cold without annoying everyone else and without stealing things that don’t belong to them.

Betelgeuse proves to be the exception to that rule, because of course it’s him. Of course he had to be the one who steals Lydia’s sweaters and buries himself in a pile of them whenever he thinks it’s too chilly. Of course he  _buries_ himself in her sweaters, instead of just  _wearing_ them on his body like a normal person would. Lydia doesn’t know why she expected anything less inconvenient from him.

Not that it isn’t nice, sometimes, to tell Delia that she needs a new sweater because the resident (is that the right word? nobody’s really sure if he lives with them or not) demon is hogging all of the other ones, but Lydia would like to have at least eighty percent of her sweaters available to her when she wants them. Lydia is  _this_ close to dragging Betelgeuse to Target or JC Penny or Old Navy or  _somewhere, anywhere,_ so he can buy himself some sweaters and give her back the ones he’s stolen.

-

“Beej, would it kill ya to steal just one of my sweaters at a time?” Lydia asks, after shutting the last drawer of her dresser with a sigh at finding it devoid of woolen articles of clothing, just like the other five drawers. He’s taken all the sweaters from her dresser, her closet, and even the two scratchy ones that she had stashed away in a suitcase under her bed.

Betelgeuse shrugs from his spot on the floor, and  _oh_ how Lydia wants to snatch every single one of those accursed wool sweaters off of him and toss them back into her dresser (but only after washing them, because ew). She can barely see his shoulders moving because of the sweaters covering him.

“Sorry, Lyds, I’ve claimed ‘em for now. Check back when the weather warms up.”

She knows he’s joking, but she can’t help letting out a groan as she sits down on her bed and glares down at him. “Aren’t you dead? Barbara said you guys don’t feel temperatures like we do. Why do you need so many sweaters in the first place?”

This question only gets her another shrug for an answer. “Dunno. Demons feel stuff differently than ghosts, though. Pretty sure I’m feeling the temperature just as much as you are, kid.”

“Fine. Why take my clothes? Why not my dad’s, or Adam’s?” Come to think of it, why is he even taking clothes in the first place if he just plans to arrange them on himself like a blanket? “Why don’t you just take a blanket instead?”

Betelgeuse’s expression falls and he mumbles something that she can’t even begin to decipher. She just hopes it wasn’t a sexual innuendo.

“What?”

Lydia doesn’t think she sounded very angry just then, but Betelgeuse seems to have a different idea. He retreats below the surface of his pile and shout-mumbles another unintelligible phrase, trailing off towards the end as his gravelly voice loses its bite. She glances over at him and sees the demon shrinking into his—no,  _Lydia’s_ —sweaters until only his grayish-purple hair is visible.  _Shit_ . Purple means sad, and gray means...resigned? Uncertain? Lydia can’t exactly remember, but it’s not good. What’s she said to make him feel this way?

She doesn’t know what to do. Demonic emotions really aren’t her forte, even if she is the only human around whom Betelgeuse shows his emotions. She’s afraid to say anything that might make him angry; or worse, make him feel even sadder. How did a question about the schematics of sweater-thievery lead to this?

After a moment to puzzle out her thoughts, Lydia says, “Why are you sad about that?” Yes, artfully demonstrating her effortless command of the English language. Way to go, Lydia.

She only gets another mumble for a reply. Isn’t that a surprise. Lydia is seriously beginning to worry now, because he’s never acted like this. Why do her sweaters matter so much?

“Look, Beej, you can’t have my help solving your problem if you don’t talk to me.”

The demon’s head resurfaces, allowing Lydia to get a good look at his facial expression as well as his hair. She’s not good with expressions (does he look sad? scared? hell if Lydia knows), but she sure does know how to interpret Betelgeuse’s ever-changing mane. Navy blue usually signals dread, and that shade is what dominates his head at the moment.

She still has no idea what the hell is going on inside his head. She doesn’t have the faintest idea as to why he’s feeling so bad in the first place.

Just as Lydia is resigning herself to sit in silence with her friend until he‘s able to actually answer her questions, Betelgeuse says, “They don’t fit me.”

“Wh– My sweaters? ‘Course they do. Some of ‘em, anyway. Delia bought me a men’s extra-large to sleep in; at least that ones gotta fit you, Beej.”

She sits down beside him and starts sifting through the pile, looking for the aforementioned sweater. It’s made from the softest neon green yarn on the planet and the knit pattern looks complicated as hell. Lydia doesn’t wear it often, partly because it usually ends up in Betelgeuse’s pile and partly because she prefers her clothes to hug her body more. She likes the pressure of tight sleeves, leggings, and double-knotted shoelaces. It’s comforting, like a hug that she can wear.

Lydia pulls the large green sweater out and holds it up to show him. “See? This is waaay too big for me. You can have this one, if you want. To wear. If you want.” Betelgeuse is eyeing it, hair shifting back towards the green part of the spectrum. That’s good. Lydia starts clearing the rest of the clothes off of him, because it’s basically a given that he’ll want to snatch the thing out of her hands as soon as he can. He won’t be able to resist being offered a garment as obnoxious as this one. Unless...

“Hey!” he yelps, grabbing for a light blue sweater with a pattern of dreidels on it that Lydia just lifted off of his arm. “Stop it! I don’t wanna be cold.”

She sighs. “You won’t be, if you put this green one on. It’s your size, you love this color, and these loops in the knitting look like dicks. This sweater practically has your name written all over it,” she tells him, feeling a bit like a used car salesman trying desperately to get rid of the jalopy that’s been sitting in the back lot since before unleaded gas was a thing.

She seems to be successful, if only for a short time. Betelgeuse takes the sweater offered to him, but instead of pulling it over his head, he wraps it around his neck like a scarf and slumps back down into his now-diminished pile of stolen sweaters. Lydia barely stifles a groan at her friend’s stubbornness.

“I swear to God, Beej, what’s the matter? Do you want a blanket instead? Do you want a different sweater?”

“Won’t matter,” he retorts with a voice just shy of a mumble. “‘M too big for ‘em anyway.”

Ah.  _Oh_ . So he thinks the problem is the shape of his body, not the shape of the sweaters. Lydia could slap herself for being so oblivious. She knows that Betelgeuse is a big dude, a chubby boy, a straight up chonker (in his own words, no less), but she never thought he had any problems with that.  _She_ certainly has no issue with him, and she’d be more than happy to sacrifice a few sweaters to keep him warm. Why didn’t he just open with that?

Lydia sighs. Her inner monologue sounds like Delia.

“Beej, you’re just the right size for literally any of these sweaters. I won’t mind if you stretch them out, okay? I hardly ever wear them outside of the house anyway. Take your pick, man. I can always get more.”

Betelgeuse’s face emerges once more from the sea of wool. He locks eyes with her and smiles, albeit weakly. Lydia grins back at him, and upon seeing her smile, his own grows as well. He accepts the hand offered to him and allows her to haul him out of the pile of sweaters, rolling across the floor of her bedroom until he bumps into the wall.

Lydia giggles. She’s glad that she was able to cheer him up. She knows he’s not faking this new cheerfulness, because his hair has turned a vibrant shade of green. “Come on, put it on! It’ll match your hair almost exactly.” She kind of wants to take a picture of him wearing it.

As Betelgeuse slides the garment over his head, his hair begins to darken in color, going back to a blueish-gray shade (that’s apprehension, right?), but as soon as he pulls it all the way on, his hair lights up once more.

“It fits! Holy crap, Lyds, you were right!” he chuckles in disbelief, tugging at the wool around his midsection. It fits him snugly, the way Lydia likes her sweaters to fit, and it looks  good on him. Almost like he meant to wear it, instead of having it lovingly foisted (paradoxical adverbial phrases are all the rage this millenium, huh?) upon him by a fifteen-year-old goth girl.

“It’s a good look for you, Beej,” Lydia remarks, still smiling at him. He’s beaming right back at her, with hardly a trace of blue left in his neon-green hair. Come to think of it, his hair matches the sweater’s in-your-face shade of green almost perfectly. This is totally worth a picture.

“Beej, dab,” Lydia instructs, pulling out her phone and opening the camera app. She smushes herself into his side and continues smiling, angling her phone so as to get one of those artsy half-tilted selfies that all the cool Instagram lesbians have. Lydia doesn’t even have an Instagram account, but it’s the aesthetic that counts. Betelgeuse does as she suggests and dabs, bending his head down as he does so in a way that totally obscures his face and leaves only his neon hair visible.

Lydia takes three photos, each one from a slightly different angle. There’s something special about this moment, something she doesn’t want to lose to the sea of memories constantly roiling in her head. That’s the real attraction that photography holds for her, the preservation of memories.

“Hey, Lydia?”

“What?”

Betelgeuse is holding another large sweater, this one in a horrendously, offensively bright shade of pink. “Can I have this one too?”

**Author's Note:**

> whoops i accidentally dumped a variation of my problem onto a character again hehe
> 
> i’d love to read some comments! feel free to comment and/or leave kudos!!


End file.
